Thursday, October 07, 2010

Look, I'm a white guy, raised Catholic, so I just don't fit into a whole lot of minority groups. I don't get to see firsthand how people of different ethnicity, religions, genders or orientations are treated by society as a whole. (That's called privilege, everybody -- it's the luxury of ignoring a whole lot of -isms whenever I want to.)

But the fact is, you can't ignore it all, and of course, you shouldn't. And sometimes it's too blatant to ignore, such as when conservative bloggers and cracker-ass teabaggers get in a huff about this country acting like the pluralistic country it is. And so, as Campbell's has introduced a Halal line of soups, a Facebook hate group called Boycott Campbell Soup has emerged for these dumbasses to express their displeasure. Which is their entirely American right to voice their entirely un-American opinion.

But remember all those smoke-screens about "respect for the dead" and "hallowed ground" that were used to obfuscate the protests against the so-called Ground Zero so-called mosque? None of that is in play here. It's just a line of soup intended to feed some people who would like to eat soup. That's it. But it's all of a piece with the racist protests of that construction project: Just a bunch of people who found a reason to hate another bunch of people they never met. For wanting to eat the same brand of soup that they want to eat, which they didn't give a moment's thought to for years. For being different from them. For existing.

They're called bigots, boys and girls. They're called racists. And I am so, so, so relieved that when I clicked onto that Facebook hate page, it didn't tell me we had any "mutual friends."

A favorite phrase of these assholes is "America: Love it or leave it." But forget it, Jake, this is Crackerville, and love in this context is the kind of love you see on COPS: some idiot in an undershirt beating his wife until she gets fed up, but who's then cowed into submission when the authorities come to take her man away. That's what love of country is to these people: Do what I want or I'll hit you. It's all about meting out punishment to those who don't comply. Boycotts against companies that dare to serve another client base. Hate campaigns against public servants who stand up for equal protection under the law. It all the amounts to the same thing: some damn thug in a teeshirt, holding up his Bible Belt, threatening to swing.

Rob

P.S. In the time it took me to write this post, 24 more hateful shitheads joined the Facebook hate group.